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When Apple‘s iTunes was introduced back in 2001, it rekindled my
interest in and purchasing of music.

I was so excited by the program that I immediately started
converting all my rather large collection of CDs into MP3 tracks.

I then sold off my CDs and remaining vinyl albums, and used the
money for additional iTunes purchases. iTunes made managing and
listening music a wholly different experience.

But in the last few years, iTunes has taken a back seat to
streaming music services, which I find a cheaper and better way
to listen to music.

If you don’t know about sites like Rdio.com, read on and find out
why you should consider using a streaming music service over
iTunes.

What Is Streaming Music?

In case you don’t know, streaming music over the Internet simply
means listening to music via a website like Rdio.com,
Pandora.com, Last.fm, Maestro.fm.

These sites have huge libraries of music, and provide unlimited
access to their music catalogue to registered members. As long as
you have an internet connection and a membership to one of these
sites, you will have access to an abundance of music on your
computer and mobile phone.

No File Downloads

When you purchase and download music tracks from iTunes, they end
up using space on your computer hard drive or external drives.
Your purchased tracks are yours to keep, but the larger your
iTunes library grows, the more memory space you will need to
maintain it.

You will also need to back up those files, because if you ever
experience hard drive failure you could possibly lose your
investment in all the music tracks you purchased.

My current iTunes library contains over a 130 gigabytes of music
and media files. It would probably be twice that much if I were
still purchasing music from the iTunes Music Store.

With Rdio.com and other streaming music sites, the music
you listen to is stored on a server beyond your computer. This
means you don’t have to download music to your computer or back
up your music to another hard drive.

Larger Collection of Music

With iTunes, you are limited to only listening to music you
purchase. Albums typically run between $10 and $15. The
collection of music on iTunes is huge, but it becomes very costly
to download and access it.

With Rdio.com, you can listen to any album or song in the
site’s library, anytime you like. If you end up disliking an
album, you have not wasted money purchasing it when using Rdio.
The only downside to Rdio is that new albums and songs may not be
immediately added to the site when they are released.

Social Network

Rdio includes a social networking feature whereby you can
discover music through the contacts you make on the site.

I have a handful of dedicated jazz listeners on Rdio who are
essentially my personal DJs. When I‘m looking for a new artist or
album to listen to, I check out the playlists of my contacts.
Likewise, I influence the music listening of people who follow me
on Rdio.

Apple has introduced a social network feature in iTunes, called
Ping, but again its use depends upon the purchasing and
downloading of music from their iTunes store—a place where most
music aficionados are not going to hang around.

A Lot Cheaper

Rdio‘s basic web streaming service is $5 per month ($60 per
year). You can listen to as much music as you like without paying
an extra dime. You can listen to music on the site via any
supporting web browser, and/or you can download their Rdio
Desktop Player, which is similar to browsing and playing music on
iTunes. Either way, you’re streaming music to your
computer.

If say you just listen to 15 albums on the site in one year, it
will cost you more than $150 to pay for and download those albums
from the iTunes Music Store. With Rdio, your monthly
subscription will end up costing only a few pennies per album,
because you have a huge smorgasbord of unlimited music to listen
to.

You can also purchase albums on Rdio for about the same price or
cheaper than on iTunes. But in the long run you’re going to save
a lot more money by simply streaming music from a streaming
library rather than purchasing it outright.

Mobile Listening

To listen to music on your iPod, iPhone, Android or BlackBerry,
you need to copy it from iTunes onto your device. It’s great to
have music files copied to your mobile device, especially for
occasions when you don’t have Wi-Fi or 3G access to listen to
streaming music.

But with Rdio, you can pay an extra $5 per month, $9.99 total,
and get unlimited access to the site’s music catalogue. It’s
almost like having a hundred gigs of music on a 16gig
iPhone.

Still Better than iCloud?

Starting June 6, Apple will be introducing their iCloud service.
iCloud will probably enable users to listen to their purchased
iTunes Store music over the Internet. This is great, but it is
likely that it will not be as good as using a streaming music
services like Rdio, in which you get unlimited music access.

There are certainly some benefits of downloading and owning music
tracks, but if you like listening to fresh music on a weekly
basis, a streaming music service is the more economical way to
go.